The so-called Castellaccio dei Monteroni, a low structure enclosed by four corner towers with merlons, is located in Ladispoli (RM) on the ancient Via Aurelia. Built in the Middle Ages next to an Etruscan necropolis, Monteroni owes its name to the reference to burial mounds (tumulus). Over the centuries it served as a post house and inn for those travelling the road between Civitavecchia and Rome.
Its cinematic profile is mostly due to Mario Monicelli’s masterpiece La Grande Guerra (1959) which set the end sequences with Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman here.
It was dubbed castellaccio (ugly castle) after WWII because of the terrible state of its conservation. It was then used by sharecroppers and tenant farmers and abandoned from the 1960s onwards. Restored in 2000, it was forgotten again.
Roma Lazio Film Commission
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